


Cracks and Splinters

by Staraxia



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Edo Tensei, Fourth Shinobi War, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 09:18:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18797443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Staraxia/pseuds/Staraxia
Summary: For all intents and purposes, Hashirama knows that he's not a living person at the moment. (Neither is Madara). Somehow, that does not get in the way of him feeling things.In which Hashirama meets Madara again during the Fourth Shinobi War.





	Cracks and Splinters

He can feel the dull chakra of the living-dead flaking off him with his every movement. He can feel the cracks in his face, his hands, all over his skin. He can feel the emotions festering in his empty chest cavity, pulsing rapidly in place of his heartbeat, all reminding him that his time should have already passed, long ago.

And yet here he was again in the land of the living, face to face with his own, long dead past. It’s really all Senju Hashirama can do to straighten himself on the face of this broken, ragged landscape choked with shattered stone, and for the first time in more than a century’s worth, his gaze beholds an old friend.

“…Madara.”

Three syllables, and even after all these years a hint of sweetness still lingers on his tongue when he says them. The man looks like he had not aged a day since Hashirama had last seen him at the Valley, save for Edo tensei’s signature jagged lines cutting across his features. He is stunning nevertheless, and Hashirama thinks it almost a little unfair.

“Madara,” he repeats once, a little soft, a little breathy, “I am here now.”

“Here to fight me, I hope.” The other man laughs, a sound so joyous and bright it seems almost out of place on this smoke-laden battlefield with no sun. His familiar battle fan and scythe clink at his side, and Hashirama cannot help but notice that he is wearing his old armor, the same set that he had gifted to him when the village was first founded. Ironic then, that Madara had only ever worn it in battle against him.

The armor plates were red, redder than he remembered. He wondered how much blood had to be spilt to make it so.

Madara is laughing once more—sharper this time, wilder, with just a hint of the cracked-mirror craziness that others had previously warned of. He spreads his arms in a gesture of welcome, the ivory skin of his wrists flashing from between dark gloves and sleeves, tantalizing. When he parts his lips to speak he is positively beaming, grinning from ear to ear. For all the years they had spent together in Konoha, Hashirama had never seen him smile this wide, and somewhere deep inside he feels his already-dead heart clench.

The back of his throat is raw and burning, as if he had just swallowed sand. By some bitter twist of fate, the Uchiha is, once again, his greatest and only adversary. There is no place for regrets in his heart anymore, even if he now realizes that for all the love he had poured into the village (and into him), he had never managed to make Madara as happy as he was now, on the brink of breaking the world.

“Why are you doing this, Madara?” he asks, and suddenly he feels drained, as if death had caught up to him at long last, only it was refraining from taking him. The feeling was not an unfamiliar one—he had known it quite intimately in those first days after his pyrrhic victory in The Valley. After he had buried both his beloved and his dream.

Madara cocked his head slightly to the side and grins. In that moment, he so resembles the dark-eyed boy by the riverside from so long ago that Hashirama freezes in his steps. If he were still in a living body, he is sure he would have forgotten to breathe. “I told you before I left the village, didn’t I?” he hears Madara say, “I have a new dream now, one that will truly lead to happiness, unlike the failure that was Konoha. And on the way to that dream, I will enjoy fighting you.”

“So you truly think even now that the village we have fought and bled for together is a failure?” Hashirama repeats duly, his voice steady. It was not like he had much left in him to be hurt anyways. “So you will bring our world to ruin in pursuit of this new dream of yours?”

Madara shook his head, his brilliant grin fading into something softer, sweeter, until he was smiling one of those rare, indulgent smiles that Hashirama had not seen since the early days of Konoha’s founding. “And that is where you misunderstand, Hashirama. You won’t understand until I’ve won, and maybe not even then. But I truly am fighting for a better world—a world that is truly without darkness or war. You will see for yourself then.”

Hashirama sighed, but this time, he did not bother to hide it. “Madara,” he said quietly, “ _please_. Don’t make me kill you again.”

“Do you really think I would be so unprepared?” Madara scoffed. “I have planned this sequence of events for more than a century, and though I admit there have been a few mishaps on the way, everything is working out quite splendidly as of now. The outcome of our battle will be different this time.

“—Unless, you still think you can kill me whenever you want?”

Sky blue bones and sinew flare to life around Madara’s form, and Hashirama knows that the conversation is over. He could only rouse his own chakra in response, and immediately Madara’s eyes light up—and even ringed and amethyst as they were, still they were beautiful. He would find them so as long as Madara’s soul burned within them, whether in life or in un-death.

His dragon ripples forth from the ground with little more than a clasp of a hand. Hashirama plants himself firmly at the head of the mythical creature whose likeness he had summoned, and he sweeps the world with lowered eyes as the beast bears him up towards the heavens. Susanoo’s sword is knocked aside almost as an afterthought, and he sees Madara beam once more. He is the most carefree Hashirama had ever seen him.

Madara’s eyes gleam like nebula dust, and when he speaks his voice comes echoing from across the battlefield, achingly clear over the din of destruction, like siren song. “You have no idea how much I’ve missed you, Hashirama,” he smiles, and Susanoo barrels forward.

It’s all Hashirama could do to rise and meet him.

**Author's Note:**

> Written on-a-whim to satisfy my shipping needs


End file.
